Awareness 2008

(May 2008)  The Pituitary Foundation has set Pituitary Awareness Week to happen during the final week of September every year.  Pituitary Awareness Week 2008 will be 21 - 27 September. 

The Pituitary Foundation has already begun work with Chapter Five to launch a significant Awareness Campaign to focus on general pituitary awareness amongst the population and awareness for the medical professionals about Hydrocortisone issues.  This campaign will focus on getting the pituitary story to consumer and medical media.

The Foundation has also launched its first-ever yearly fundraising awareness event.  The Strawberry Line Walk will be held on the final Saturday of Awareness Week each year.  The Walk this year is scheduled for 27 September.  We are currently recruiting walkers and volunteers, if you are interested, please email helpline@pituitary.org.uk. 

For more information on our Awareness Campaign, go to our Awareness Page.

To show your support by donating to The Strawberry Line Walk, go to our Strawberry Line JustGiving Page.

Leaflet Project

(May 2008)  In response to the Needs Analysis and Patient Satisfaction Survey (see below), the Pituitary Foundation will be undertaking a leaflet library revamp and update.  The information in all of our published titles will be updated and enhanced and we will introduce new titles.  We have already published Hydrocortisone: Advice for the Pituitary Patient and Psychological Issues of Pituitary Disease: Diagnosis and Treatment. 

We will be publishing two more leaflets about the psychological impact of pituitary conditions as well as introducing leaflets on weight gain and pituitary disease; a family range of leaflets for parents with pituitary children; and leaflets for children and young adults. 

This is an enormous project which will take 12 to 18 months to complete.  It will also require a great deal of expert time and funding.  We would like to thank the many endocrinologists as well as the UWE team for volunteering to share their expertise. 

If you would like to donate to The Pituitary Foundation to help us with projects like these or our many other programmes and services, click here.

Wales Pituitary Conference

(May 2008)  Working with the Cardiff Support Group and the endocrine team at Cardiff University, the Pituitary Foundation will hold its first ever conference in Wales on 25 October 2008.  This will be a one day conference held at the Quality Hotel in Cardiff.  More information will be available soon, including registration forms and programmes. 

We wish to that Awards for All Wales for providing genrous funding for this event.

Patient Satisfaction Survey

(UPDATE - May 2008)  The team at the University of the West of England (UWE) completed another social research project to help us better understand our members' experience.  In July 2007, the UWE team sent 1,000 surveys to a random sample of members of The Pituitary Foundation.  They received 490 completed returned surveys.  The goal for this project was to assess satisfaction with diagnosis, treatment decisions, information access and managing conditions as well as the role the services and programmes The Pituitary Foundation during the pituitary journey. 

We are still assessing the results of this survey and we will utilise them, along with the Needs Analysis (see below) to evaluate and improve the services we offer.  Further, we hope to use the results of this survey to inform the medical community about the experience of our members, to increase awareness and to improve patient satisfaction.

Needs Analysis

(Updated May 2008)  The Pituitary Foundation, with generous support from the University of the West of England (UWE), launched a Needs Analysis in 2006. The goals of the Needs Analysis were to ascertain:

• Do we understand about the ways in which having a pituitary condition impacts on patients?
• Do we know enough about how pituitary patients are affected by the services they receive?
• Do we know about other services or support that people would like?

We had a wonderful response from the pituitary community for this analysis.  The results have been published extensively and can be read here:   Needs Analysis Report.pdf (344.11 KB) .

The Pituitary Foundation will be increasing our leaflet library to address some of these needs and have already published our first leaflet, The Psychological Impact of a Pituitary Condition:  Diagnosis and Treatment.  We hope to have several new titles published by the end of 2008.